~”You won’t be missed at the polls thereafter so stop whining and open your eyes to the realities of huge differences in Mormonism and Christianity.”~
Perhaps not; I don’t think it’s going to happen, though. I’ve got a lot more faith in Orthodox Christians than some of the Orthodox Christians here seem to have, including yourself.
Still, there are over six million Mormons in the U.S. You don’t think the loss of, say, three million dependable conservative, politically active voters would make a difference to the Republican party? What has the margin of victory been in the last few presidential elections?
I guarantee, it’ll be a lot easier for Republicans to alienate Mormons than for Democrats to alienate blacks.
You haven’t seen whining from me, MGH. I present my analysis and opinion, right or wrong. You should try a more effective rebuttal than “stop whining.”
~”You write as if Christians are so backward in their relating to Christ that they would be duped to comprehend the tremendous divergence between Mormonism and Christianity.”~
You write as if it should have some kind of bearing on a presidential election. I don’t think it should, and I don’t think it will.
Time will tell which of us is right. I’m perfectly satisfied, and secure enough in my opinion, to wait and see what happens.
There are only 2.5 million self-professing members of the LDS Church in the United STates according to the last census. Of those there are possibly less than one million that vote.
You and your Church are inflating your numbers, which would be dangerous if you’re counting on three million Mormons votes, they simply aren’t there.
The LDS Church reports that 1,720,434 Mormons resided in Utah in 2004. About 62 percent of those attend church regularly, according to an analysis using statistical statements by Bateman and activity estimates from Brigham Young University professor Tim Heaton, who studies Mormon demographics. That would mean about 43 percent of Utahns are active Mormons. This would mean a majority of all United States Mormon population lives in Utah. Utah is inconsequential in a Presidential election and even so has alway fallen to a Republican Presidential candidate.
Activity in many other areas of the world is much lower than that.
Mauss says the worldwide retention problem stems from missionaries attempting to baptize as many people as possible, some of whom are not prepared for the demands of an LDS life. New members are often not provided the support they need during their first year in the faith.
Bateman agrees with Mauss on that point, saying to increase retention, church members must spend more time befriending converts.
“Over time, what President Hinckley has asked us to do is to really surround that person with new friends,” Bateman said.
New Mormons are the most likely to leave the faith, according to Bateman, but he says once those people have children who are raised in Mormon families, the retention rates start to rise.
Sorry, I left this information out of my previous post to you.
The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) showed a significantly smaller numbers of Americans self-identifying as mormons, about 2.8 million in 2001. That would seem to be an upper bound on activity.
To hear them tell it; there are over 30,000,000 gays; too!